Brandy’s words sound like gibberish until Bryson interrupts my scratch-fest with a loud groan. “Do she really have to go on break right now? Ain’t nobody even in this hoe. Bro… on my soul, I hate this dude.”
And I do too.
I even hate the way he walks—pigeon-toed and confident.
Bryson glances at me over his shoulder like he did the first day we met in elementary school to warn me of the kid that had been messing with him at recess. But we’re in the wild now, and Ace ain’t a kid.
By the time he makes it to the counter, my titties that Bryson’s been eyeing feel fuller and the rubbing I’m doing with my thighs feelsamazing.
He drops a handful of Dum-Dums on the counter and I wait for him to say something to me—anything. Like ask me why I talked so much shit to him at practice the day before or for him to tell me he got me banned from Coach Williams’ gym, but instead he just stares at my name-tag.
“Lord,” he says while I zero in on his lips.
They’re pink and big, and I wonder what they might feel like against mine. No one ever pronounced my name that way with lips like his and it makes the moisture in my mouth disappear.
“Your mom from France?” He tilts his head and grabs one of the Dum-Dums while I move on autopilot, ringing up the rest of the candy he slid onto the counter.
For the first time in my life, I think I understand what Mama means when she says I’ll know the difference between a boy and a man.
“Boys let you run your mouth,”she said, nodding and grinning.“But a man gon' shut you right on up without even saying much.”
I feel Bryson staring at the side of my neck. Another tiny welt rises from my skin, snitching on me, and telling him that my virginal freshman ass encountered a boy I hate and like for real, but he doesn’t get it.
Ace unwraps the sucker and pops it into his mouth while I try to remember all the reasons I was supposed to hate him—thatthingthat happened at UCLA, his daddy trying to hoe Bryson for the starting point guard position, the way he looked at me at that first practice, all the girls he was connected to that look nothing like me. There are so many reasons I should really fucking hate this dude.
“Or is she from Spain?” He tilts his head again, talking around the candy. “Lourdes.”
He rolls the R in a way only a black boy can. It isn’t obnoxious, but full of swag, like he picked up Spanish one summer from a Barcelonan nanny.
Mama’s never been to any of those places he’s talking about. The closest she’s been to France is Baton Rouge, and she can’t even point out Spain on a map.
“Nah,” Bryson clucks for me like the duck he is. “Her mama from the Northside.”
Ace smirks and pulls his wallet from his shorts while I fight to scream out “no shit, dumbass!”
He’s talking about my name and wondering why my black ass mama named me after a French city when we’ve never been on an airplane. God, where is my voice?
“Right…” Ace nods, swiping a heavy black card from the folds of his wallet and sticking it in the card reader. “The Northside.”
He lets the words linger while he punches his pin onto the keypad.
* * *
Ace
Learningwomen again is like rediscovering God. Not that I forgot God or anything like that. We were just beefing for a minute but we back cool—at least I think we are.
Yesterday, I realized thatthis womanis my reminder that Mom might’ve been right about God all along. She claimed he didn’t make no mistakes but there’s still a tiny problem with that. This woman isn’t even a woman—she’s just an immature freshman, and it has to be a mistake that her calling me a “weak ass nigga” makes my dick hard. LaQuan said she’s Bryson’s girlfriend “in his head” and he’s like her yappy little guard dog all because I smiled at her while he tripped over his own ankles at practice.
“Yeah.” Bryson frowns up at me. “Like I said…the Northside.”
“Cool.” I nod at him.
Lourdes is the girl that won’t give him any pussy and she sounds and feels like Mom told me all girls with her name should:“They should sound and feel good. If you ever meet a girl with that name and she feels right…just know that’s home.”
She didn’t mention that they sounded just like her or tell me why she was obsessed with a name just because it was “so damn pretty,” but I think I get it. Lourdes has a round face with cheeks that make me want to squeeze them between my hands, and she has braids that drape down her shoulders with baby hair swirled across her forehead. Her nickname fits her because all the best parts of her are grown womanfat—her thighs, her hips, her ass. I came across a lot of girls named Lourdes back in LA, but none of them ever looked or felt as good as this one. She’s perfect, just like that name on her name tag.
The card reader beeps and I snatch my card out of it, waiting on her to bring the noise she brought in practice, but she doesn’t. Her round lips fall open and she squints at me with cat-shaped eyes, like she’s waiting for me to get on her for what she called me.
